Telegram Integration with OpenClaw: Complete Setup Guide

Telegram integration is one of the most popular OpenClaw features. Get deploy notifications, error alerts, and interactive bot commands — all in your Telegram app.

Why Telegram?

• Instant — notifications arrive in seconds
• Reliable — 99.9%+ uptime
• Free — no cost for bot API
• Powerful — rich messages, inline keyboards, groups

Step 1: Create a Telegram Bot

1. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather
2. Send /newbot
3. Give it a name and username
4. Copy the bot token (looks like 123456789:ABCdef...)

Step 2: Set the Token in OpenClaw

openclaw env set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN="123456789:ABCdef..."

Step 3: Configure Notifications

In your app, use the OpenClaw Telegram SDK:

import { telegram } from '@openclaw/telegram'

// Send a message
await telegram.send({
  chat_id: process.env.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID,
  message: `✅ Deploy successful: ${app.name} is live`
})

// Send with options
await telegram.send({
  chat_id: process.env.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID,
  message: `❌ Error detected`,
  options: {
    parse_mode: 'HTML',
    reply_markup: {
      inline_keyboard: [
        [{ text: 'View Logs', url: 'https://openclaw.dev/logs' }]
      ]
    }
  }
})

Step 4: Get Your Chat ID

Send a message to your bot in Telegram, then:

curl https://api.telegram.org/bot<YOUR_TOKEN>/getUpdates

Look for "chat":{"id":123456789,...} in the response. That's your chat ID.

Set it:

openclaw env set TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID="123456789"

Common Use Cases

Deploy Notifications

// In your CI/CD pipeline
await telegram.send({
  chat_id: process.env.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID,
  message: `🚀 <b>${process.env.APP_NAME}</b> deployed\nVersion: ${gitSha}\nBy: ${gitAuthor}`
})

Error Alerts

// In your error handler
app.use((err, req, res, next) => {
  telegram.send({
    chat_id: process.env.TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID,
    message: `🚨 <b>Error in ${req.path}</b>\n${err.message}`
  })
  next(err)
})

Health Check Failures

OpenClaw can auto-alert you when health checks fail:

openclaw alerts set --type health --telegram --threshold 3

Group Notifications

For team notifications, create a group and add the bot. Use the group's chat ID (it's negative, like -123456789).

Security Tips

• Never commit your bot token to git
• Use environment variables, not hardcoded values
• Consider a separate bot per environment (prod vs staging)